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In the last couple of days, we've experienced snow-panic in Portland. We're too new here to know how to assess the weather. Yesterday, when many spoke of snow coming, the sky was so pretty in the late afternoon. Why did Bob's Red Mill cancel our Cooking with Kamut class for today?

Because it was snowing early this morning. Just enough to be picture-worthy. Then we heard about people living north of us who'd had to wait hours for buses struggling with serious accumulation. By 11 a.m., what appears in the photo at the right (from my window) was gone.

But wait...early afternoon and here it comes again. As I write, snow and sun, nothing seems to stick on the roads. But who can tell? A good day to think about cooking and knitting and talk about my friend's new book, "A Knitter's Home Companion: a heartwarming collection of stories, patterns, and recipes." [*updated link showscolor photos not in review copy]

Michelle Edwards and I met (in the internet sense) via her knitting essays for Lion Brand's online newsletter. Her thoughtfulness and her rounded, engaging illustrations, both evident at that link, led me to write her. A conversation began and took several turns over the past six years. I discovered her childrens' books, favorites of my grandchildren now, and she joined a project of mine.

But back to her new book. When Michelle first talked to me about what she planned to write, I was intrigued--yarn and food. But how to bring it off? She has taken her time and produced a small book I'm glad to own and would be pleased to give as gift to another knitter--or someone who wants a recipe for potato latkes or roasted root vegetables.

When the book first arrived, I was struck by its difference from most contemporary knitting books. It's a bit old-fashioned, takes time to lead the reader along the paths of Michelle's life from upstate New York to kibbutz to wife and mother of three mostly grown children in Iowa City. Reading along, trying to be disciplined and go page by page, I was distracted by the "Good Karma Slippers." She wrote the pattern to problem-solve for a friend who wanted to duplicate knit ones bought in India.

Did she know I wanted something lightweight, other than bedroom slippers, to wear indoors? Turkish cast-on and knitting in the round on two needles are new challenges. Time to go to my local yarn place because I want these; maybe other knitters will want to knit them too.

In one of our earliest exchanges, Michelle shared her concern about her children's learning about safe sex. Soon after, I asked her if she would add a pattern to the Knit a Condom Amulet project. She surprised me with her yarn, 100% Corn Silk from Iowa. Instructions for all seven are in the blog.

If I were still living in New York, I could finally meet Michelle Edwards on March 10 at her book signing in Lion Brand Yarn Studio on West 15th Street. It's a beautiful store opened three years ago by this 130 year old company known for its community-minded owners. I'll be with her in spirit with memories of generous people in the yarn world we share connections with--Melanie Falick, publisher of "A Knitter's Home Companion," whose interest generated enthusiasm about my Knit One Red Worm and David Bluementhal of Lion Brand who gave me many skeins of red chenille for that project.

Tomorrow--snow's melted again--I'm off to get cotton bamboo for those slippers.

YOU have been sleeping, yes, snoring away as women's bodies have been commodified and contained by the dominant culture. I'm speaking to younger women who say, "I'm not a feminist!" and celebrate fashion over substance. It is difficult to know what to say to you as in South Dakota, in Congress, in some nearby Catholic Church the frenzy grows to control women's bodies.

We who have so many, many memories of that brief time when we believed our efforts could bring about permanent change were naive: why did we think it was possible that Roe v. Wade would last.

Fran, my far less militant friend, surprised me, "The fight will never end for us." Hearing her say what I have not allowed myself to think was a shock. My anger has been replaced by sadness at the futility of our efforts.

That would be Ron and me. Driving to Philomath, Oregon for dinner on a farm, with extra time before our 7 p.m. reservation, we made a slight detour to visit Corvallis, home of OSU (Oregon State University). Another new Oregon city for us; we noticed a large bookstore still open after five.

Parked the car in front of a beautiful courthouse** and immediately saw a station wagon filled with NO WAR signs. We had chosen the right time--five to six every evening different community members stand tall for a peace vigil.

Every day for the past nine years.

People in cars waved, honked in a friendly way. Were the students at OSU active in anti-war efforts? No, we were told they are a conservative group.

As usual, we fit in age-wise: most of us gray hairs. Except this young engineering grad student from Saudi Arabia. He brought a sign made for the vigilers to show support in another language. Often they are joined by the local Veterans for Peace chapter.

One of the women had moved to Corvallis from Queens, New York, a few years ago. She agreed that nothing like this could take place back east, especially in front of a government building like the Benton County Courthouse. Unlike the Corvallis group who do not have to get police permission for their vigils, in NYC the smallest street gathering with a sign (not to include any holder more rigid than a cardboard tube) requires a permit.

We talked about Grandmothers Against the War HERE and HERE
with whom I had vigiled at Rockefeller Center. Recalled with the
former-Queens grandmother how each of us had stood on the steps of the
42nd Street Library with Women in Black
some time in the 1990s. I told her that their behavior code was too
militant for me. Called me out for speaking to my neighbor. Violated
their rules: wear black, do not talk. Wearing all black was a
stretch for me, not talking even more so. As in the familiar, often
misquoted (see link) Emma Goldman sentiment, If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

I hung out with the women, a couple of them knitters who were surprised to learn about the prevalence of HIV in women over 50 and my other blog about the Condom Amulets project. Later I realized that they would have appreciated that there was an OSU amulet in the school's colors that proved too political (?) for a Portland yarn shop.

Ron stayed with the men near the station wagon. He learned about their rocky times as former professors at OSU. We both did sign-hoisting and were grateful to the group for the opportunity to relieve a bit of our current-events-in-America angst on September 10.

** Calvin Beale Senior demographer at USDA photo, one of a series of courthouses around the U.S.

They checked their Blackberries last night, my daughter and spouse. They'd gone out for a walk as we stayed with the kids.

"Nothing yet," was the 10 p.m. (PST) verdict. No, our foot-dragging, drama-loving Congress would make us stay up late to find out would they/wouldn't they.

Earlier, when the House Republicans used women's bodies to stall the healthcare bill, I was angry--once again. More frequent Elderbloggers Darlene and Ronni posted timely rants. Amanda Maracotte* at RH Reality Check posted a stronger response in line with my own feelings on the relationship of Stupak amendment to men's wish to control women and their bodies as result of their "deepset fear of women's agency."

My family tried to calm me with reminders that reform was so crucial, that the abortion restrictions would never last, that we needed to support this shaky bill. Made an effort to let go of disappointment but had less heart in sending more emails, small donations to the "good guys" in Congress.

While we waited, surprising new guidelines were issued by the U.S. Prevenive Services Task Force on mammogram testing. As an old lady who has had two "false positives," one at 52, the other at 64 which led to a biopsy, I take this very personally. Who of us does not?

[Aside: Is Politics Daily, not a feminist blog, the only one to picture the mammo machine? Did any of the mainstream media stories show that dreadful invention, now marginally improved since my first one in the 1970s? I have a couple of paper "gowns" saved from these visits--blue, pink. These combined with the eerie sounds of the X-ray machine have always seemed ready-made for a dance performance or a scene in a play I'd write.]

Occurred to me that we need a younger women's consciousness to focus on useful health education in middle and high schools. All the controversy around "sex ed" may have left us with nothing! Bring back those plaster human bodies we cringed at in my freshman college gym class, the ones that come apart to reveal our insides. Young people need to learn more about how it all works--and more about ways to evaluate health info that comes toward us.

Yes, yes, I am way behind on details of our many good experiences, educational and environmental, in the place from which we are now voting--Portland, Oregon. [NYC friends ask, "How you doing with the rain?" What rain; it's been gloriously sunny.]

Most immediate issue (after more and more

emails to our new congresspeople about single payer/public option health care legislation) is yarn. How to store it and where it fits in my life. Will I make something from this 50/50 wool and hemp? Bought at some fiber fair a few years back, no memory of my plan. Sunday we return to OFFF (Oregon Flock & Fiber Fest) in Canby.

Will the PDX Knitters respond to the idea of Slow Knitting as a new category in fiberland? Last year, they were quite good-natured about modeling the Couverle Condom Amulet (a newsboy kind of cap.) "So how is it different?" a knitter I met yesterday at the OSHER program (more on that later) asked me.

Needlecrafts have become explosively popular among younger knitters, I answered, so different from the days when one was simply "a knitter." One example is the "Sock Summit" held at the Convention Center here August 5-7. Someone needs to tell me whether the number who attended from around the world was 7,000 or 17,000; these women, and a few men, are intense and constantly producing. That's fine but just one pair of booties is a big project for me. Feels vintage to say to an enthusiastic foot-coverer, "I knit my last socks in the 1950s."

We all know that I definitely am vintage and have the incipient arthritis to prove it! So Ron and I have had one of those talks about our visit to OFFF. He will check out fiber for potential additions to his spinning stash. My own plan: locate other Slow Knitters. But no new yarn purchases--would love to hear ideas for small things to make for family and friends-- with what's already on hand--like the 8-inch stuffed animal almost finished for youngest granddaughter.

Speaking of Knitting Small...in public ways to save the world as we know it--Oberlin College, my alma mater, has published a lovely piece about The Oberlin Condom Amulet in their current issue. Thanks to Google, the Alumni magazine editor called, then made the immodest proposal to the powers-that-be.

Rachel Walden of Women's Health News, an alum from a later decade, has mentioned it but there has not been a stampede yet from startled women over 50 gasping "...I never heard of that..."

By the way, check out Rachel's post at Our Bodies Our Blog about a recent study connecting HRT and lung cancer...may raise more questions than it answers.

Ten days into our altered lifestyle in the northwest. Besides the physical part of getting settled, accepting that we really did not reduce our possessions enough, there's much to experience--in addition to our family. Last week we went to orientation for SSI, Senior Studies Initiative, sponsored by the local community college. We'd enjoyed a couple of their "Current Events" meetings last winter on our "deciding" visit. There are six sites around town, only one close by.

It took place in Lake Oswego, very leafy with big houses; I wondered how people get there without a car. Intrigued that one of the groups has a presentation scheduled on Emma Goldman. Looking forward to that. Today, after a trip to an ENT doctor (nose-bleeding is my dramatic response to the move), I mentioned to Ron that our time so far has felt very suburban. Must get out of the car soon, take mass transit buses and light rail which are very available from our place.

Saturday we stopped by the Belmont Street Fair, an annual explosion of hippie-dom plus eviro and neighborhood consciousness. Not the only one, of course; the city is filled this time of year with celebration, fruit festivals. Young people come to several parts of Portland for the lifestyle of music and tatoos, live alongside young families who sort of like that atmosphere. This is the world we know from visiting our daughter in a nearby neighborhood.

Yesterday I went to the Terwilliger Users Group (TUG to insiders) and was amazed by how many people were there. Must have been forty, men and women. A woman gave a talk about Facebook which I was pleased to hear. Each of our children, different as they are from one another, is now on it. When I had dinner in New York before we left with Lisa Daehlin, the soprano/knitter, she told me I ought to consider it for the Condom Amulet project. It's thanks to her that there's a group for it on Ravelry but Facebook does have some perks not available there.

The staff tech person (how cool is that?) for Terwilliger Plaza had mentioned there were a couple of other folks with blogs living here, so I asked if the internal website might list them. It's going to happen. This is very different from New York City where I never met another blogger near my advanced age.

Tonight another Plaza activity, "Victory for Woman Suffrage in Oregon," a talk with great slides by Dr. Kimberly Jensen of Western Oregon University. I have been too east-coast-centric about women's studies; was surprised by many western states voted to give women the vote ahead of the opposite coast. Portland was a leader in moving the Oregon legistlature to do in 1912--on the sixth try and pioneered less ladylike approaches with mass advertising and public displays. In her recent book, Minerva, Mobilizing Women in the First World War, Jensen has written about Dr. Esther Lovejoy, a Portland physician and local leader in women's rights, who was an Army doctor.

Zoe, our granddaughter, on a brief visit to our apartment, announced in her four-year-old way (birthday party last Saturday), "What a mess!" One day we hope to present a better model to our descendants. If we can only figure out where to hang all the pictures, stow the books.

All my love and thanks for all the places we've been, crises we've survived, children and grandchildren we've loved...

...and your great patience in teaching me too many things to list...what I've learned from your pleasure in sharing with everyone who comes within your range.

All of us look forward to many more June tenths with you--

most especially yours truly ...

Celebration: High-Rise Style...Last night--a building party where we live. Lee Morgan, Ron's co-chair and great party-giver, suggested this one as they wrapped up their term of office, turned it over to another pair. Singing the Birthday song was a high point of the pot-luck evening...who says New Yorkers don't care about one another?

Yes, yes, it's very dark out there on the economy landscape. But so much has already happened since Obama took office. Remember, we said (back in the "good" days of August) that he was inheriting a landfill's worth of problems.

How about some rage toward the fool in office before him?

You think I do not have some complaints? Certainly--more troops to Afghanistan, too much nodding toward the religious. Of my gosh, he's not perfect. Much less perfect is the shallow media? They could back off on the bankers for a moment. And the annoying (to me) too-much-information, known in my family as TMI, about every dress/school/meal detail in the Obama family. Actually I would like to hear from Marian Johnson, Michelle's mother about her friends on Social Security, what it's like to go from her former life to "retirement" in the White House. Not going to happen because that might bore men and women under 50.

A worthwhile newspaper might focus on how close we've come to something like single-payer health insurance. Or that the administration has made moves that upset the Catholic Church and religious right who believed they had a won the struggle to make abstinence, that bogus sex education notion, the law of the land. Things undreamed of as within our reach only a year ago.

The top image here was drawn on the a sidewalk at 111th and Broadway last summer. Hani Shihada is the artist; I once watched him work on a dark street in Greenwich Village. By October it was still there, maybe touched up.
In January, I saw the black and white sketch on a sidewalk at 13th and Spokane S.E. in Portland, Oregon. Coast to coast we were very enthusiastic about Obama. Now we live with him day by day as he tries to clean up multiple messes, some decades old. I make mistakes so I assume he will too.

December One demands my attention every year. World AIDS Day began in 1988...twenty years and where are we? The statistics do not seem to impress the public any longer. Even though women are the growing group with HIV, they have no advocacy groups like those for breast cancer. Because they are women of color?

The other day, I took a picture of my latest knit sweater for Roxie. For the white background needed, I moved a framed picture. It was a Xractal I made titled "Loving What's Left." At its center is a neckpiece I made in 1993 with shells and a key, dedicated to a hope that a cure would be found soon for AIDS. My focus has shifted since then.

Prevention is what I speak to with Condom Amulets. Treatment is important. But not enough for the future of my granddaughter who will wear this little blue sweater. Her generation needs us to make Safe Sex as powerful a public health issue as smoking has become--in the United States. So many are more comfortable with focusing on HIV/AIDS in Africa--so far away, so different from us here.

The most depressing movie I saw at the recent Margaret Meade Film Festival was "Today the Hawk Takes One Chick."Gogos, the grandmothers in Swaziland, are left to care for their HIV-positive grandchildren. Their parents are dying in great numbers. Health resources are sparse. I was overwhelmed. The entire country seems doomed.

Taking a break from writing this, I walked into the other room. Ron was trying to find something to watch while he spins wool. By chance, he found "All of Us," a documentary on cable. Turned out to be a strong film-- sad and hopeful. It followed Mahret Handefro, an American residen (from an Ethiopian family) at Montefiore Hospital in the South Bronx. Her goal was to develop a program that would move women of color to take more control of their sexual interactions with men. In 90 minutes much territory is covered here and briefly in Ethiopia where she speaks with women who feel powerless in dealing with men's sexual demands. In the Bronx she works with two HIV-positive patients, with peers, and with her own issues around men.

Mahret develops what she names a "truth circle." She educates with hard factson the impact of unprotected sex on black women's lives--blacks who are only 12 % of the U.S. population but 68% of the HIV/AIDS population. Consciousness raising sessions bring it all together. All the women struggle with the question, "When do you bring it [safe sex] up with a man?" One of Mahret's patients acknowledges that she's realized too late that "men were a drug for me."

Mahret is open about her own problem with setting limits in relationships during a group meeting with her peers. As she points out, this is "true primary prevention." What's missing and more elusive is work with men. Women can change; men have to also. I hope you see the film, perhaps rent it to share with others.

Last summer the New York City Health Department began "The Bronx Knows," an ambitious program to reach the 250,000 people in that borough who have never had an HIV test. Health professionals know that HIV testing carries less of a stigma when it is a routine part of health care. Dr. Donna Futterman, co-chair of the program, looks forward to the Bronx becoming "the first community in the nation where everyone knows their status.” It is impressive that it began in June HIV testing has increased 20% in the Bronx.

Lately I've been thinking more about the category on my blog, "Grandmotherhood Now." Maybe this came about when I learned that Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, will move to the White House with the new President's family and Joe Biden's mother is going with him and his wife to D.C. Will we hear more about elder concerns?

I'm always on the lookout for ways grandmothers--and grandfathers--can encourage ideas important to the future of young people. Besides what I've described in the South Bronx, there's Making Proud Choices for teens at Planned Parenthood in Portland, Oregon. If you know of others, please leave a comment here along with thoughts you have about input elders might offer. Of course, financial support is always crucial.

Life happens. We had a plan to trek upstate for the yearly New York Sheep & Wool event known as Rhinebeck. But I spent two hours in the dental chair last Friday, so we missed the chance to see local friends, faraway vendors we've come to know. We have a special fondness for Rhinebeck-- heralded spot where Ron was seized with the spinning urge earlier in the century. Oddly its explosive recent growth has not made internet connection more reliable--reason for no link here. Maybe that's a good thing?

Loyal to the fiber, we'd planned our September trip to Portland to synch with Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival in nearby Canby, Oregon. Seems to be known locally as OFFF, at least that's what I learned from Judy Becker of PDX Knitters. She is famous for "Judy's Magic Cast-On," and a tiny business card that illustrates her technique.

The photo of me is on her blog Persistent Illusion, the first online appearance of the Couverle (French for "lid") from Knitty.com, re-imagined as a Condom Amulet--with the addition of a double-knit pouch to hold the all-important Safe Sex accessory. It was Amanda Gale of the ManThong Condom Amulet who suggested the inside-out style for those wishing to be less modest. (Pretty Aaucania cotton yarn, hand-dyed in Chile, purchased at Portland's Close Knit on our previous visit.)

We also met Cindy, Bobbie Wallace, Monica in the PDX Knitter's tent provided by the Fest in exchange for free knitting advice to the public. All decked out in Obama buttons, though mine was new to them. We plan to connect with them again on our upcoming, longer visit in the winter.

[Big Apple Knitters and NYC Crochet provided free help for an event hosted by yarn companies for a couple of years in Union Square. Nothing was for sale so it was a drain on resources of local yarn stores to provide staff simply to raise their visibility. Good place for beginning knitters, mellow at the outset in 2000,then became very crowded mostly by people seeking freebies. Now gone.]

Of course Ron bought roving. I am in a not-buying-yarn mode at the moment. We found a beautiful small rug for a wall in our daughter's home. It was woven in Teotitlan del Valle, a village of weavers near Oaxaca, our favorite Mexican city. "Vida Nueva," a Zapotec Women's Cooperative formed this first, and only, all-women's cooperative to market their handmade rugs directly to buyers. Pastora Guitierrez, a member of the co-op, was at their booth with Juanita Rodriguez, their stateside supporter from Corvallis, Oregon. Beautiful designs; you can contact them to order or volunteer to bring their work near you by emailing vidanueva@comcast.net. .

More sightings at OFFF...connecting again with

Carol, the Oregon shepherd we met at Black Sheep Gathering in June, student from Oregon State University who told me all about the Agricultural Extension Service, and a couple of very Portland-style innovators.